MARKET WRAPS
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Trading update from UniCredit
Opening Call:
European stock futures traded higher early Monday. Asian stock benchmarks gained; the dollar was little changed; Treasury yields edged higher; oil futures fell; while gold rose.
Equities:
Stock futures point to a higher open in European markets on Monday. Investors are awaiting the release of the January jobs report, which was delayed for a week because of the brief government shutdown. This week's other economic data highlights include U.S. retail sales for December and the January consumer price index.
The selloff in software and its ripple effects have left jittery investors scrambling to gauge where the next blow might fall. Clark Bellin, chief investment officer at Bellwether Wealth, said his firm plans to trim its exposure to tech and use that cash to bolster positions in shares of companies in the industrials and materials sectors.
"It makes you worry about what other pockets have been driven up by almost pure speculation," said Bellin.
Forex:
EUR/USD's outlook for the week ahead is likely to be driven most by U.S. jobs data, said Fawad Razaqzada at Forex.com.
"With the ECB seemingly comfortable with the EUR/USD exchange rate, we could well be heading back towards $1.20 in the event of a jobs reporting missing expectations or not being surprisingly strong," he said, adding that there's not much to look forward to this week from the euro side of things.
Bonds:
Yield curves are steepening around the world - including in Japan, Germany, the U.K. and Canada - because of a sense that "governments are adding to fiscal stimulus and concerns are growing around the sustainability of that," said Tom Nakamura, head of fixed income and currencies at AGF Investments.
In the U.S., the Treasury curve has more room to steepen relative to bond markets in other countries for a number of reasons, Nakamura said. Those reasons include worries about an "overreaching" White House that may interfere with the Fed's independence and push for lower interest rates, which could then result in inflationary pressures and investors demanding more compensation for the risk of holding long-term Treasurys, he said.
Energy:
Oil fell early Monday amid possible position adjustments. In talks last Friday, Iran and the U.S. signaled a willingness to keep working toward a diplomatic solution that could stave off an American military strike, although Tehran adhered to its refusal to end enrichment of nuclear fuel. However, Iran is also threatening to fire missiles on a broad set of targets around the Middle East if Trump orders an attack.
"Should the situation become tense again, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil could rise back to USD70" per barrel, said Barbara Lambrecht, commodity analyst at Commerzbank Research.
Metals:
Gold rose in Asia amid growing U.S.-Iran tensions. "U.S.-Iran talks remain a point of focus," Tickmill's Joseph Dahrieh said. "Any setback or escalation would likely revive gold-buying interest," he said.
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Copper faces persistent supply tightness as major mines struggle with power outages and conservative production guidance, said ANZ.
Global copper mine output is projected to rise only around 1% this year. The market is likely to remain undersupplied amid resilient demand from the energy transition and data-center growth, which would keep copper prices supported, ANZ added.
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Bulging Chinese iron-ore stockpiles are likely behind a drop in prices for the steel ingredient, said Commonwealth Bank of Australia's Vivek Dhar. Spot iron ore has fallen below $100/metric ton for the first time since the start of August, according to Platts, part of S&P Global Energy.
"The oversupply narrative facing iron ore markets has been driven predominantly by weak Chinese steel demand," Dhar said. "Rising seaborne supply has also contributed to oversupply concerns."
TODAY'S TOP HEADLINES
Stocks' Sharp Rebound Is Only Making Investors More Nervous
The snowballing retreat in software stocks that gathered up big tech, private credit, and even the corporate bond market this past week ended in a remarkable rebound, leaving investors bracing for more turbulence ahead.
Days of declines stemmed from investors' worries that the disruption from artificial intelligence might be more widespread than thought, and fears that the companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the AI build-out might fall short of delivering on the expected sky-high profits.
The labor market was bad last year. Will investors get stung by a poor January jobs report, too?
Investors are on edge about the January jobs report after an anxious week on Wall Street - but the survey is likely to tell them more about the past than the future of a fragile U.S. labor market.
Stocks were hit hard last week before staging a dramatic recovery on Friday that catapulted the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA above the 50,000-point threshold for the first time ever. Meanwhile, U.S. Treasurys BX:TMUBMUSD10Y finally saw safe-haven demand as silver SI00, gold GC00, bitcoin BTCUSD and other hot areas of the market convulsed.
U.K. Prime Minister Starmer's Top Aide Resigns Amid Epstein Fallout
LONDON-U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned Sunday, as the fallout from the Epstein files ripples through British politics.
McSweeney's decision to step down followed days of criticism by lawmakers across the British political spectrum over the prime minister's choice to appoint Peter Mandelson, an old friend of Jeffrey Epstein, to be the U.K.'s ambassador to the U.S.
Iran Threatens Missile Attacks, Hoping Trump Sees Strength Not Weakness
Iran's missile program was born of weakness in the early years of the Islamic Republic. Now the question is whether it is formidable enough to head off a military confrontation with President Trump.
Tehran unleashed a barrage of around 500 missiles that struck civilian and military locations in Israel last June but did little strategic damage. Though Israel pounded Iran's missile launchers and storage sites during a 12-day war in June, the regime emerged from the bruising conflict with much of its remaining arsenal intact.
A Critical AI Niche Is Dominated by One Little-Known Japanese Company
TOKYO-Imagine a sheet made of microscopic glass fibers, woven by a former silk maker and thinner than a human hair. A shortage of this material-essential in artificial-intelligence chips-is looming over companies including Apple and Nvidia.
The cloth-like material known as T-glass comes almost entirely from a single century-old Japanese textile company called Nittobo that doesn't expect to bring significant new capacity online until late this year.
Big Tech's AI Push Is Costing a Lot More Than the Moon Landing
It's bigger than the railroad expansion of the 1850s, the Apollo space program that put astronauts on the moon in the 1960s and the decadeslong build-out of the U.S. interstate highway system that ended in the 1970s.
We're talking about the data centers now being built and financed by some of the world's biggest companies in the artificial-intelligence boom.
Write to singaporeeditors@dowjones.com
Expected Major Events for Monday
00:01/UK: Jan KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs
07:00/DEN: Dec External trade (provisional figures)
07:00/DEN: Dec Balance of payments (provisional figures)
07:00/ROM: Dec International trade
07:00/NOR: Jan PPI
07:00/NOR: 4Q GDP
08:00/SWI: Jan Consumer Sentiment Index
08:00/SVK: Dec Construction production
09:00/CZE: Jan Unemployment data
10:00/LUX: Jan CPI
10:00/CYP: Dec Foreign Trade (provisional)
10:00/MLT: Dec International Trade
11:00/FRA: Dec OECD CPI
11:00/IRL: Dec Industrial Production and Turnover
11:00/IRL: Jan Irish Live Register latest monthly figures
11:00/POR: Dec International trade statistics
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 09, 2026 00:01 ET (05:01 GMT)
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